Modern Cornish (''Kernuack Nowedga'') is a variety of the revived

Cornish language Cornish (Standard Written Form: or , ) is a Southwestern Brittonic language, Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. Along with Welsh language, Welsh and Breton language, Breton, Cornish descends from Common Brittonic, ...

. It is sometimes called Revived Late Cornish (RLC) or ''Kernuack Dewethas'', to distinguish it from other forms of contemporary revived Cornish. It had been known for many years that the Unified Cornish of Morton Nance was unsuitable to use as a spoken language. Indeed Richard Gendall had pointed this out in the late 1950s.Hedhyu, (1958) Issue 13, page 4 When

Unified Cornish Unified Cornish (UC) (''Kernewek Uny '', ''KU'') is a variety of the Cornish language Cornish (Standard Written Form: or , ) is a Southwestern Brittonic language, Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. Along with We ...

came under heavy fire in the early 1980s, various attempts were made to rectify its problems. While some supporters stuck with original or modified UC, two main schisms arose, that of

Kernewek Kemmyn Kernewek Kemmyn (Common Cornish or "KK") is a variety of the revived Cornish language. Kernewek Kemmyn was developed, mainly by Ken George in 1986, based upon George's earlier doctoral thesis on the phonological history of Cornish. It takes mu ...

led by Ken George, and that of Modern Cornish, led by Richard Gendall. Unlike

, which tended to go to medieval Cornish for inspiration, Modern Cornish uses the latest known forms of Cornish from the 17th and 18th centuries from writers such as Nicholas Boson, John Boson, William Rowe, Thomas Tonkin and others, and

Anglo-Cornish The Cornish dialect (also known as Cornish English, Anglo-Cornish or Cornu-English) is a dialect of English spoken in Cornwall by Cornish people. Dialectal English spoken in Cornwall is to some extent influenced by Cornish language, Cornish gra ...

dialect words of Brittonic origin. Proponents of

claim that the later forms of Cornish are corrupt and anglicised, but supporters of Modern Cornish such as

Cussel an Tavas Kernuak Cussül an Tavas Kernôwek (formerly ''Cussel an Tavas Kernûak''; the Cornish Language Council) is an association founded in 1987 to teach, research and further the Cornish language in Cornwall (Cornish: Kernow), UK. Since the adoption of a Stand ...

counter this by saying that they are continuing the natural evolution of the tongue where it left off. The

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

of Modern Cornish is a standardisation of the English-influenced orthographies of Cornish writers of the 17th and 18th centuries, and its grammar is more

periphrastic In linguistics and literature, periphrasis () is the use of a larger number of words, with an implicit comparison to the possibility of using fewer. The comparison may be within a language or between languages. For example, "more happy" is periph ...

than that of Middle Cornish-based varieties. It retains a number of English borrowings discarded by Kemmyn and Unified, e.g. ''wolcum'' instead of ''dynargh'' for 'welcome'. It makes sparing use of accents and diacritical marks. For instance, the word for 'good' typically spelt ''dâ,'' could also be written ''daa,'' and the word for 'month' could be spelt ''mîz'' or ''meez''.

is the governing body of Modern Cornish. The need for standard spelling when learning a language has led Cussel an Tavas Kernuak to adopt the Modern Cornish spelling standardised by Gendall and Neil Kennedy. Modern Cornish provided a source of input into the creation of the

Standard Written Form The Standard Written Form or SWF () of the Cornish language is an orthography standard that is designed to "provide public bodies and the educational system with a universally acceptable, inclusive, and neutral orthography". It was the outcome of ...

of Cornish in 2008.

References

* ''A Student's Grammar of Modern Cornish'' by R.R.M. Gendall (The Cornish Language Council, 1991) * ''Tavas a Ragadazow: The Language of My Forefathers'' by Richard Gendall (Teer ha Tavas, 2000)

External links

Cussel an Tavas Kernuak website
with information on Modern Cornish and learning materials {{Cornish language Cornish language Cornish language revival